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Nokia's Last Launch Goes Large With New Lumia Devices

Nokia’s presumably final throw of the hardware dice in Abu Dhabi today saw the Finnish mobile manufacturer go big. With two six-inch screen smartphones running Windows Phone 8 and a ten-inch Windows RT tablet, Nokia joins fellow handset manufacturers in both the phablet and tablet spaces for festive seasons around the world.

The Nokia Lumia 1520 is a high-end Windows Phone 8 smartphone. Thanks to it running the GDR3 release, it is the first Windows Phone device with a 1080p screen. You can’t miss it, as it’s a six inch behemoth. 32 GB of internal storage and the welcome addition of MicroSD on a Nokia flagship will help with the new camera options, including RAW image support. The unit is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core CPU running at 2.2 GHz with 2 GB of RAM.

With a mix of the Lumia 925 styling and the imaging of the Lumia 1020, it would be fair to call the Lumia 1520 the new flagship device of the Nokia Lumia range. It is initially priced at $749 SIM free (ie before a contract or subsidy) and will be available before the end of the year in the US, UK, Hong Kong, China, Singapore and other European markets.

The Lumia 1320 is a mid-range device that also supports a six inch screen, but in this case running at the lower resolution of 720p. It has just 8 GB of internal storage, 1 GB of RAM, and a 1,7 GHz dual-core Snapdragon 400. It launches first in China and Vietnam, which says a lot about the positioning and price point of the handset. At $339 SIM free, this is a handset that brings large screened phablets to new markets.

Nokia also released three feature-phones in their ‘Asha’ line-up, which will be bolstered by the debut of the messaging suite WhatsApp on the Asha platform.

But the interesting move is Nokia’s first tablet device. The Lumia 2520 looks like a regular Lumia handset, but sporting a ten inch screen. Under the hood though this is a full blows Windows RT tablet, and will be rightly compared to Microsoft’s Surface range, but there are some decisions to make note of. Nokia are pushing this tablet to be taken out of the ‘tablet’ comfort zone of the home, so there are no wi-fi only models, you will have 4G LTE out of the box. The screen is configured to work well in bright sunshine and in an outdoors environment, and Nokia are quoting an 11 hour battery life.

Each product shows the care and attention to detail that Nokia are famous for, but they also illustrate, less by design, Nokia’s flaw over the last few years. Speed.

The move to phablets has been going on for some time, with the Samsung Galaxy Note launching in October 2011, and other manufacturers have been working on their variants. Nokia are late to this party and I suspect that they’ve been waiting for Microsoft to sort out the Windows Phone code to run on higher resolution screens rather than any strategic thinking on their part.

As an aside, if the Nokia staff thought there were delays before, when Microsoft’s purchase of the Devices and Services section goes through, the integration is going to lead to even more logjams in the process!

Nokia now has hardware that’s the equal of any other smartphone manufacturer, but they are not the first to the market. The parameters of the phablet competition has already been set, and Nokia will find it tough going to go against the grain, for example with the lack of a stylus for the Lumia 1520 or building a tablet that is designed for use cases that are not the norm of the current tablet users.

With the hardware on show at Nokia World, the Finnish company have spent 2013 setting up a strategy of disruption with handsets and tablets that are close enough to expectations that they will be accepted by the consumer, but with a few changes of focus that they bring the customer towards Nokia’s view of the mobile world.

How that will play out in 2014 depends more on Microsoft than Nokia, but if the teams do leave Finland and head to Redmond with the division sale, then they’re taking a good set of cards that could be played well… if it fits with Microsoft’s view of mobility.

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